


The Fifth of November

by greerwatson



Series: ITOWverse:  Autumn Holidays 2010 [9]
Category: RENAULT Mary - Works
Genre: Gen, Guy Fawkes Night, ITOWverse, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-16
Updated: 2010-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6289234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To his surprise (given the black-out), Mervyn gets an invitation to go to a proper Bonfire Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fifth of November

Every week, there was a newspaper delivered.  Mervyn never saw it arrive; and roundabout inquiry revealed that none of his friends’ families received it.  Neither of his parents ever bothered to read it; but his mother found it quite handy for the canary.  Once in a while, Mervyn was curious enough to have a look at it first:  it was called the _Renault Times_ , which was another mystery, since no such publication was ever available down at the shop, nor at any news stand in town.

It had begun to arrive shortly after Mervyn had got home from Hospital, that time when he’d nearly died.  (His mum never said; but he wasn’t so dim that he couldn’t figure it out.  He’d nearly died, same as Uncle Ted and all his family, though not from the war.  It was a shocker; but the scar had proved quite a sensation when he returned to school.)  Hospital was a clear and separate time in his memory of his life:  there was before, when life was more or less normal; and there was after, when life was _almost_ normal, but occasionally oddly different.  One of his most cherished possessions came from Hospital:  a copy of the _East Africa Pilot_ :  he had shown it once to his teacher at school, who had told him that—if that sort of thing interested him—then he should work harder at his maths.  Which he did; and was even given a little trigonometry as an extra (not that there was any question of his staying on, which had never occurred to him).  When anyone asked what he wanted to do when he left school, he always said he wanted to go to sea.  In a port town such as Bridstow, this was an unremarkable answer, and soon became accepted as his expected future. 

One day early in a November when there was no guy and no bonfire because of the war, an unexpected visitor turned up.  Although it had been quite a while since he’d left Hospital and gone back to school, Mervyn recognized him:  it was one of the doctors.  Not the surgeon who’d operated on him, whom he’d scarcely seen even on the ward; but one of the many junior doctors who did most of the scut work.  He offered an invitation.

Mervyn’s mum was a bit doubtful.  (“He’s a bit of a pansy, if you ask me,” she said.)  But Mervyn wanted to go; and, with the promise that, if the doctor tried any funny business he should kick him where it hurts and run like hell, he was given permission.  He took the bus from the corner into the centre of the city where the hospital was, hung around the waiting room in Casualty, and was met by Dr Reid when he got off shift.

Just how they got where they went (wherever that was) Mervyn could never be sure:  they did not take a car or a train; yet they were clearly out in the countryside by a big house, with a pond and a proper wood, like a gigantic park.  It was getting on towards sunset, but quite light enough to see the waiting bonfire.  A number of people were already present, and the crowd grew quickly in anticipation of the spectacle.  Obviously, everything was on the QT:  someone had maybe slipped the local bobbies something to look the other way.  (He could only hope there’d not be an air raid that night.)  One thing was clear, though:  this was on the up and up, at least as far as his mother’s fears were concerned:  there really was going to be a proper Bonfire Night tonight, war or no war.

As Mervyn looked around, though, he was puzzled by the people he saw.  Many of them looked perfectly ordinary, though there were fewer kids than he would have expected.  However, there were quite a lot in very funny clothes.  When he saw the first couple, he simply assumed it was dress-up—a costume party, as well as Bonfire Night.  Except that a lot of them were basically wearing the same sort of costumes.  Also, the men were in frocks; and, if there was one thing Mervyn was sure of, it was the unlikeliness of men wearing frocks on the street.  Or in a park, either.

Clearly he was gawking, for Dr Reid said, “Some of the guests are foreign, Mervyn:  they’re wearing different clothes from us.  It’s just the way they dress, being foreign; and _it’s rude to stare_.”

Having heard this before from his mum, Mervyn knew it was true (not that it ever stopped people staring, of course).  Anyway, people being foreign made sense of the clothes.

“Do you need to stay with me, or will you be all right on your own?” Dr Reid asked.  Mervyn did not, of course, consider himself a baby to be led by the hand; so he was told that they’d meet on the porch of the house when the evening was over. 

First thing Mervyn did was go over to look at the bonfire.  The sun was down now; and the sky was starting to get grey (and it would soon be hard to see); but it wasn’t yet dark, so the bonfire wasn’t lit.  That made it no less fascinating.  Several quite ordinary looking men in civvies were going round putting last minute touches to it all.  They made no mind of a boy having a look, though with an eye out to make sure he did nothing.  One or two other children were also hanging around; but he ignored them, at least for now.  His attention was all on the promised bonfire.

As he walked around it with a critical eye, a couple of men with a little boy tagging at their heels came up suddenly, carrying the guy.  Mervyn was riveted.  It was quite large, bigger than anything he and his friends had ever managed to put together; and he thought it looked pretty good.  Just because he hadn’t made one for a couple of years didn’t mean he’d forgotten how a guy should be.  From the joints of it, they’d used leaves for stuffing:  that’d burn fast, of course.  But it made for quick putting together; and—as Mervyn could see, just looking round—they’d obviously no shortage of trees to supply the wherewithal.  The face was home-made, which (from Mervyn’s point of view) was the normal way of things.  It didn’t look bad, not bad at all:  whoever’d done it had done a neat job, and managed to give the guy a moustache and beard that weren’t all lopsided. 

Mervyn watched the men hoist the guy up and tie it to the top of the bonfire.  As a result, he missed the words that started the fight.  He turned at the sounds, though, and saw the two little boys on the ground, punching at each other. 

One of the men with the guy started to haul off the boy who’d come with them, and one of the bonfire-builders grabbed the other, a foreigner in a colourful frock that had fancy embroidery on the hem.

“Behave yourself, Alexander!” scolded one of the men.  “You know better than to start a fight.” 

“He said I looked like a girl.”

“He’s wearing a dress!” cried the other boy.  “A pretty _party_ dress.”

Both kids, Mervyn reckoned, were only about five or six years old.  There was no way he wanted to get involved.  Leaving the grown-ups to sort it out, he took himself quietly off instead to inspect the promised fireworks.


End file.
